Race could offer GOP a buffer in keeping Senate majority
Republican Michele Tafoya is campaigning across Minnesota in an effort to convert a long career reporting from NFL sidelines into a U.S. Senate seat, with a State Fair booth flyer declaring she is “stepping off the sidelines” to run. She faces Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in a race the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates as “likely Democrat” — in a state that last elected a Republican senator in January 2009 and where President Trump lost by roughly 4 percentage points in 2024.
The contest could shape whether Republicans retain their Senate majority in November, and it places both candidates on the same November ballot as two women competing for Minnesota governor: Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican state House Speaker Lisa Demuth.
Tafoya’s central campaign issue is Minnesota’s welfare fraud scandal, which The Wall Street Journal reported was perpetrated mostly by Somali immigrants and which prompted Gov. Tim Walz to abandon his bid for a third term. According to the WSJ, Trump and other Republicans have cited the scandal in criticizing Democrats nationally. Tafoya has proposed mandatory prison minimums for perpetrators, stronger penalties for noncitizens who commit fraud, and federal funding penalties for states that cannot demonstrate adequate anti-fraud safeguards.
“Fraud is almost always the first thing mentioned when I ask Minnesota voters what is on their minds,” Tafoya said in an interview. “They feel lied to, which they were. They feel stolen from, which they were. People are so angry, and they’re even angrier no one in the government has been held accountable.”
Flanagan has played down her ties to the scandal, though Walz’s former chief of staff testified to Congress this year that she attended multiple meetings where Minnesota’s misuse of federal funds was discussed. Rep. Angie Craig, Flanagan’s opponent in the Democratic primary, also argued during the primary that fraud would be a vulnerability for Flanagan in November.
Tafoya is distinguishing herself from most Republican candidates on several cultural and political issues. When an older man at the State Fair asked her whether former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, she immediately said “yes” — directly contradicting Trump — before adding, “the ensuing four years were terrible.” She supports abortion rights for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. And she said she was “glad that Kristi Noem was fired” after two Minneapolis residents were killed by immigration officials in January, calling the events “tragic and awful.”
“When the president does something that I think is good for America and good for Minnesota, I will say so,” Tafoya said. “When he makes a decision that is not good for America or not good for Minnesota, I will say that, too.”
Flanagan has challenged that independent posture, arguing Tafoya would be a “loyal soldier for Donald Trump.” Flanagan supports Medicare for All, taxpayer-subsidized child care and has called the war in Gaza genocide — positions Tafoya is highlighting on the campaign trail. “Especially after everything we’ve been through in this state, we can’t afford to send one more yes vote to this administration,” Flanagan, 46, said.
Polling in the race has been limited. One survey released shortly after the primary showed Flanagan ahead by 5 percentage points, though Tafoya said her campaign’s surveys show a double-digit lead among independents.
The 61-year-old Tafoya is a California native who earned her undergraduate degree at the University of California-Berkeley and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California. She worked in sports talk radio in North Carolina before moving to Minnesota in late December 1993, eventually breaking into national sideline coverage for CBS, ESPN, ABC and NBC, including work on “Sunday Night Football” and “Monday Night Football.” She also hosted drive-time radio at two of the largest stations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market.
After backing then-Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential bid and saying in 2022 that she didn’t think Trump should run in 2024, Tafoya has rejected suggestions that her Senate run is a vehicle to revive her political commentary profile. “This is not out of need, and it sure as heck isn’t a vanity project,” she said, noting the campaign has cost her time with her son’s first college baseball home run and her daughter’s high school prom. “It’s worth it to me if I can make things better for their future, if I can stand in the way of this socialist lurch we find ourselves in.”
Tafoya also shares Trump’s position on biological males competing in girls’ sports, citing a 2025 Minnesota high school softball championship team that featured a transgender pitcher. “The girls who lost in that championship series, ask them how they feel about it because they could not swing the bat against this pitcher,” she said.
The Minnesota Senate race has drawn national attention, and according to the WSJ, it could offer the GOP a buffer in keeping the Senate majority in November.